As an avid David Mitchell reader, I snapped up this book as
soon as I could. This tale is similar to his most recent one, The Bone Clocks, and manages to
elaborate on that world and the forces at play there. Dr. Marinus makes an
appearance, and aspects such as orisons and lacunas are explained a little bit
more. The majority of the plot centers around the house itself, it appears on
the last Saturday of October every nine years and the people who are lured
there encounter something different every time.
From a small child to a grumbling policeman to a college
student, spanning 1979-2015 the reader sees the progression of this phenomenon
across time and personality as the narrator changes. What remains constant is
Mitchell’s wit and incredible writing ability that keeps the reader hopelessly
engaged even as we realize that there is no way for the characters to make it
out. (The repeated mentions of foxes and hounds should probably have tipped you
off to that already though.)
This book is probably his shortest one yet, it is only five
chapters and a little over 200 pages. Despite how much I liked the technique of
using the house as the center of the story, instead of a character, it did
leave me a little bit unsatisfied. We only get a brief snapshot of Dr. Marinus,
a character who I am immensely fond of, and the book ends with a really
unsubtle allusion to a sequel. Great, I’d love to hear more about this world,
but could we get a little more now?
So Slade House is
a great book if you are already a Mitchell fan and need an extra dose of his
writing, or if you want an intro to his works. Here’s to hoping that it’s not
too long until that other sequel…
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